Bae Hu-ryeong

Bae Hu-ryeong is the Sword Emperor of the World of Myriad Swords, a martial artist who reached the 99th floor and continued his failed ascent by creating living-spirit versions of himself to advise other climbers. The version accompanying Kim Gong-ja becomes his demanding teacher, constant critic, and eventual elder brother, while the original waits at the summit for a successor capable of completing his quest.

Biography

The sword forged by a world

Bae Hu-ryeong is not born in the ordinary sense. The people of the Great Yin Grotto forge him as the Primordial Sword, concentrating their world's laws, lives, suffering, and expectations into one complete being who remembers the instant of his creation. The impoverished ask him to recognize and save them, the weak ask him to bear their future, and the presiding law tells him that everyone else exists to be surpassed or protected by him. Being made the sole protagonist gives him immense purpose, but it also teaches him to mistake singularity for solitude. (Chapters 391–392)

He leaves the grotto because effortless victory cannot answer that loneliness. After traveling across continents and challenging beings who remain one step below him, he tells a True Human leader that he wants brothers of his own rather than the universal parentage others assign him. The answer is neither consolation nor worship: the True Human orders him to lower his head and tests how many blows he can endure. Bae Hu-ryeong accepts that challenge and becomes the disciple of the person later remembered as the Sun Sage. (Chapter 392)

The Sun Sage teaches through deliberate, unsheathed honesty. He admits jealousy when his pupil excels, frustration when he can teach no more, and affection without disguising the sharpness that comes with it. Bae Hu-ryeong learns to answer that honesty as though crossing swords, and his master's death finally teaches him that exceptional strength cannot prevent every loss. Instead of concluding that he is uniquely invincible or uniquely alone, he understands himself as fortunate, limited, and ordinary enough to share the world's unsolvable grief with other people. (Chapter 394)

After the Sun Sage dies, Bae Hu-ryeong wanders until challengers, admirers, and would-be followers turn his route into a Great Path and his many sword titles converge into Sword Emperor. When the Tower appears, he enters with the promise that anyone who wishes may follow and that he will wait above. He later refuses every constellation's apostleship, believing that a lone human reaching the summit would prove that people less fortunate than he could also rise without divine sponsorship. That principle propels him farther than any contemporary climber, but it also makes his ascent deliberately solitary. (Chapters 299 and 395)

A living spirit chooses a successor

The Bae Hu-ryeong first known to Gong-ja presents himself as an A+ Sword Constellation skill copied from Marcus Calenberry. The card describes a ghost who died after failing at the top and can advise or mentally affect only the skill owner, so this version initially believes himself kidnapped from Marcus and asks to be returned. Much later, the original reveals that these apparent ghosts are living spirits made from his memories, periodically synchronized with their root on the 99th floor and filtered by the Tower during transfer. The companion is therefore genuinely Bae Hu-ryeong's mind and experience, but not a second physical original. (Chapters 9, 306, and 396)

His irritation gives way to purpose when Gong-ja explains the thousands of suicides used to undo Yoo Soo-ha's future. Bae Hu-ryeong inspects his physique, watches him hunt, and refuses to flatter his poor coordination or martial aptitude. What he recognizes instead is the rare absence of hesitation before death, a disposition formed rather than inherited. Seeing a successor who can repeatedly face lethal failure, he chooses to train Gong-ja, openly wondering whether this new pupil or Marcus will climb farther and promising to make the weaker novice surpass the established Sword Saint. (Chapter 9)

Bae Hu-ryeong immediately turns that promise into an exacting routine. He wakes Gong-ja before dawn, designs his physical schedule, provides an elixir formula refined through his own experiments with poisons, and forces him to perceive aura under live combat pressure. His methods exploit Gong-ja's regression and resistance to death, but the instruction is precise: he explains how aura moves from the heart, corrects footwork and sword angles, and teaches the pupil to treat each repeated failure as usable martial information. Gong-ja's rapid progress changes their bargain from opportunistic tutoring into a working partnership. (Chapters 10–16 and 40)

That partnership acquires a moral boundary on the early floors. Bae Hu-ryeong is tempted by danger and boasts of his own ascent, yet he reacts with unusual seriousness when the Devil King's reward offers a shortcut to the 99th floor in exchange for killing the leading hunters. Having failed there himself, he insists that the offer is a trap and asks Gong-ja not to take it. Gong-ja's rejection of both murderous advancement and an easy reward confirms that the pupil will climb by his own choices; Bae Hu-ryeong consequently remains beside him through regressions, sharing retained memories and giving tactical corrections rather than dictating the desired outcome. (Chapters 20, 28, and 40–49)

From sole teacher to elder companion

The Universal Library confronts Bae Hu-ryeong with a pupil who wants another martial master. He can immediately read the principles behind the ruined murim world's arts and explains how righteous practitioners make themselves vessels for the world while demonic practitioners make themselves nails that scratch it. Even so, he reacts possessively when Gong-ja seeks instruction from So Baek-hyang, repeatedly insisting that his own sword is superior. His resistance exposes pride and concern together: he fears a reckless apprenticeship, yet he continues analyzing Gong-ja's training and remains present when the Heavenly Demon accepts him. (Chapters 64, 69, 72, and 75)

Accepting So Baek-hyang does not end Bae Hu-ryeong's mentorship; it forces him to stop treating teaching as exclusive ownership. He helps Gong-ja interpret techniques whose intent differs from his righteous lineage, identifies when the pupil's understanding is incomplete, and shields or scouts for the party when only Gong-ja can perceive him. Gong-ja consequently grows through two incompatible traditions: Bae Hu-ryeong supplies martial structure, perception, and relentless standards, while So Baek-hyang gives suffering a sword form. The resulting disciple no longer imitates either master, a development Bae Hu-ryeong complains about but continues to foster. (Chapters 62–78)

As Gong-ja's world expands through Raviel, Kim Yul, the civilization stages, and the Tower Master's trauma, Bae Hu-ryeong settles into a role broader than technical instructor. He remains the only companion carried through every regression and transition, puncturing self-importance, warning against opponents Gong-ja cannot yet defeat, and supplying knowledge from floors no one else in the party has seen. The Tower Master's temporary incarnation even perceives his otherwise invisible form, confirming that the abrasive voice Gong-ja treats as ordinary is an exceptional Tower phenomenon. Their daily arguments increasingly resemble the intimacy of family rather than a master dispensing lessons from above. (Chapters 113, 125–139, 168–208)

The 50th floor also makes Gong-ja walk through the consequences of Bae Hu-ryeong's first ascent. Bae Hu-ryeong had destroyed the Magic Tower's sixth spire, defeated Lefanta Aegim three times, and left enemies and admirers who still define themselves through him after a century and a half. He guides Gong-ja through the void poison, monsters, magical alarms, and old defenses, but the inherited reputation is not a simple benefit: the Magic Tower attacks anyone thought to be his successor, while the self-appointed Sword Emperor Sect guards an idealized interpretation he never requested. (Chapters 125–139 and 290–301)

The promise made to Grey Spider

When Bae Hu-ryeong first meets the Grey Spider, he intrudes into her private research space, provokes her, and then recognizes a person beneath the titles attached to the Magic Tower's ruler. He calls her normal because she directs anger according to her own rules and accepts responsibility for them. Yet his sympathy does not make him stay. Determined to prove his solitary path, he apologizes in advance, asks her to follow if she dislikes his choices, and promises that she can become the second person to reach the top after watching him conquer it. (Chapter 305)

Grey Spider follows as far as the 90th floor and waits six years after Bae Hu-ryeong vanishes at the 99th. She eventually treats the silence as proof of his death and returns to rule below, preserving the destroyed sixth spire as the place where she intends to display his failure. Her rage is therefore not merely an old enemy's grievance: Bae Hu-ryeong asked her to trust a promise that, from her position, he abandoned without explanation. His refusal to accept companions created exactly the lonely witness whom his grand proof was supposed to encourage. (Chapters 299 and 305–306)

Gong-ja returns to the Magic Tower by choosing the opposite strategy. With Bae Hu-ryeong's old words and knowledge, he gathers constellations and oppressed followers into a Grand Campaign, declares himself the Sword Emperor's successor, and forces Grey Spider to face the unanswered relationship. Bae Hu-ryeong does not seize control of the confrontation. He lets Gong-ja translate his apology and reveal that his original is still undertaking the 99th-floor quest, while also acknowledging the pupil's deduction that his living spirits attached to Gong-ja and Marcus are multiple chances to bring a worthy person back to that floor. (Chapters 298–307)

The reunion strips grandeur from his old promise. Bae Hu-ryeong admits he is late and sorry, explains that he refused constellation messages and faith because he intended to remain human even as a ghostlike skill, and accepts Grey Spider's right to judge his successor. Gong-ja then defeats her by methods unlike Bae Hu-ryeong's solitary orthodoxy, leaving the teacher embarrassed but unable to deny that his chosen heir has overcome the relationship he left unresolved. Much later, Bae Hu-ryeong accompanies Gong-ja as Grey Spider dies after accepting repeated challenges from her victims; neither easy forgiveness nor direct recognition occurs, preserving the damage alongside the possibility of future reconciliation. (Chapters 306–308 and 391)

The final lesson and an open road

When Gong-ja finally reaches the 99th floor, he meets the root Bae Hu-ryeong in a physical body, waiting in a flower-filled sanctuary with his greatsword. The revelation corrects the companion's earlier self-understanding: the original never ceased striving at the summit, while his living spirits advised multiple compatible climbers below and synchronized their experience back to him. He tests Gong-ja immediately, using a sword strike to demand practical command of external energy, and praises the disciple only after Gong-ja channels the world's vitality through himself without trying to possess it. (Chapters 395–396)

The last key is not supplied through comforting words. Bae Hu-ryeong sees Gong-ja collapsing into guilt and self-pity over the dead, breaks into that inward space with his sword, and challenges him to a bout. He says that Gong-ja's memorial for the victims taught him something his own master must have felt: a pupil can reveal a response the teacher would never have devised alone. Now capable of physical contact again, Bae Hu-ryeong chooses to give his brother funerary rites in the language he knows best, making combat both correction and recognition. (Chapter 397)

Their duel becomes the completion of both lives rather than a contest over who can imitate whom. Bae Hu-ryeong's final thrust unfolds his seasons, sanctuary, creation, loneliness, master, and satisfaction as a single martial world. Gong-ja answers with a sanctuary built from his own history and forces Bae Hu-ryeong to admit that satisfaction does not erase longing. They clash until both can affirm that they are ordinary, not alone, and not born wrong, then drive their crossed weapons into the final keyhole and pass beyond the 100th floor together. (Chapter 398)

At the Sky's Extreme Point, Bae Hu-ryeong asks neither rank nor territory from the Tower Master. He shares a drink with her and Gong-ja, then requests the Authority to Leave the Tower, judging that reaching a summit obliges a climber to descend. The authority restores an open road across the worlds enclosed by the Tower. He plans to revisit his homeland, drink with Marcus, pay respects at Grey Spider's garden, challenge other swordsmen, and return occasionally. His long project ends not with another solitary climb, but with the freedom to leave, visit, and be contacted by the brother who reached him. (Chapters 399–400)

Appearance and personality

Bae Hu-ryeong is a very large, muscular man with long hair described as red like the sun. In life he wears a sleeveless martial uniform marked with the characters for “Sword” and “Emperor,” and the physical body encountered on the 99th floor carries a colossal sword. His skill-spirit form preserves the same rugged build while floating with the partial transparency of a ghost. His clear eyes, heat, loud laughter, and almost constant physical vitality make him seem aggressively alive even when he can interact with only one observer. (Chapters 207, 305, and 395–397)

He is boastful, competitive, blunt, and often deliberately irritating. He wakes pupils because he is bored, converts affection into insults or training, and refuses reverence even while speaking as though his superiority were self-evident. Beneath that theatrical pride is an exacting ethic learned from the Sun Sage: face another person's real heart without softening it into a convenient fiction, accept the cuts that follow, and take responsibility for one's own blade. His greatest development is not becoming humble, but recognizing that being ordinary, dependent, and changed by a pupil does not diminish his strength. (Chapters 9–15, 299, 305, 394, and 397–400)

Abilities and skills

Bae Hu-ryeong's power combines an artificially forged constitution, the Sun Sage's righteous martial lineage, comprehensive aura control, and a Sword Constellation authority that distributes living-spirit mentors. His late techniques draw directly on external energy and a sanctuary shaped by his life. The corpus demonstrates extraordinary scale, but it does not provide a conventional rank ladder for his cultivation.

Primordial Sword constitution and martial perception

The Great Yin Grotto creates Bae Hu-ryeong by concentrating the world into a single living sword. The technique gives him complete awareness from the instant of creation, an extraordinarily long lifespan, and strength that places even powerful True Humans below him. The corpus calls the forging potent and profound but does not give a reproducible activation formula, energy cost, or method by which another being could receive the same constitution. It is innate to his created body rather than a weapon he equips or a temporary blessing. (Chapters 391–392)

His perception is developed further by experience across ninety-nine floors. He can judge physique, coordination, will, aura sensitivity, and combat hesitation after a short observation; distinguish masters by breathing and movement; read an opponent's level from a clash; and recognize environmental traps, skills, and martial principles learned in other worlds. These judgments can be wrong when he reads character rather than technique, and ghostly observation does not grant physical intervention, but they make him an unusually efficient trainer and battlefield guide. (Chapters 9, 12–17, 40, 59, 64, and 125–129)

Aura and the Dawn Circle Sword

Bae Hu-ryeong teaches aura as a force already present in hunters, first perceived flowing from the heart and then deliberately routed through the body. His own control is fine enough to read and manipulate external energy, reinforce movement and weapons, perform light-foot techniques, and project attacks on a scale capable of splitting skies or demolishing a magically fortified spire. He also demonstrates minute precision by firing an aura-infused drop of liquor with potentially lethal penetrative force after reaching the summit. (Chapters 12–15, 127, 292–296, 396, and 399)

His martial-art level is named the Dawn Circle Sword. Lefanta Aegim records losing three lethal encounters to him and uses Bae Hu-ryeong's standard as the threshold for immediate counters after an evasion. The corpus establishes the style's supremacy through those victories, the destruction of the Magic Tower's sixth spire, and Bae Hu-ryeong's climb, but it does not explain a fixed sequence of Dawn Circle forms, their activation conditions, or whether the name covers every technique he later displays. Those mechanics therefore remain unknown rather than being inferred from his title. (Chapters 127–129 and 293–296)

Heart sword and external energy

At the highest level, Bae Hu-ryeong treats personal internal power as optional rather than limitless. Deep meditation dissolves the boundary between self and world, while circulation directs the world's energy to the required destination. A practitioner who can establish both conditions instantly can become a pathway instead of storing the power inside a finite bodily vessel. This heart sword principle supplies vast energy without permanently taking it from the environment; the 99th-floor flower world remains unchanged after enormous exchanges because the borrowed force returns to the world. Its practical limitation is exacting understanding and control: knowing the theory does not mean one can apply it under attack. (Chapter 396)

In battle, Bae Hu-ryeong can use that flow to split clouds and sky, erase incoming aura, or open a voidlike passage that swallows an enemy's projected energy and expels it from another direction. Gong-ja can disrupt his posture by absorbing and bursting the returned light, showing that the process is not an untouchable defense; timing, redirection, and competing command of external energy still matter. Bae Hu-ryeong's latest demonstrated mastery supports prolonged close combat immediately after these exchanges rather than functioning as a single-use release. (Chapters 396 and 398)

Martial Blade, Formless Form, Single Strike

Bae Hu-ryeong's culminating named technique is Martial Blade, Formless Form, Single Strike. Its physical motion is a single thrust, but the effect turns the world “inside out”: accumulated seasons erupt in layers, and the flower sanctuary along with the events of Bae Hu-ryeong's life engulfs the target. It is more than raw external energy or spatial cutting. The strike transmits the world he has formed—creation, loneliness, apprenticeship, loss, joy, and satisfaction—as martial force and intelligible experience. (Chapter 398)

Gong-ja survives by meeting it with his own Heart-level Infernal Heavens art and sanctuary, first reading the life within the blow and then opposing its conclusion. That response causes Bae Hu-ryeong to hesitate, after which their worlds interpenetrate and the duel continues at close range. The representative use therefore establishes both overwhelming scale and a counter: an opponent capable of forming, sustaining, and asserting a comparably complete inner world can prevent the Single Strike from deciding the fight outright. The technique remains available to the original Bae Hu-ryeong in his physical state at the end of the corpus. (Chapter 398)

Sword Constellation living spirits

The original Bae Hu-ryeong possesses Sword Constellation – Root, an A+ authority that creates living spirits from his memories to advise climbers who possess a corresponding skill. Each spirit is perceptible only to its owner, can mentally intervene, and carries Bae Hu-ryeong's experience, personality, and martial judgment. It cannot directly touch the physical world. This explains why the companion can speak through regressions and scout visually but must teach Gong-ja to execute every movement himself. (Chapters 9, 40, 62–75, 306, and 396)

The spirits are not continuously networked duplicates. Their memories synchronize with the root at intervals usually measured in days, after which updated versions can be sent out; the Tower may censor, distort, or edit knowledge during transit. Consequently, a spirit can be surprised by events the original or another copy has already experienced, and neither Gong-ja nor Marcus necessarily receives information in real time. Once Gong-ja reaches the root on the 99th floor, Bae Hu-ryeong again acts through his own physical body and later receives the Authority to Leave the Tower, so his latest freedom is personal rather than an upgrade that makes every living spirit corporeal. (Chapters 9, 306, 396, and 400)

Power progression

Relationships

• Kim Gong-ja: His pupil, argumentative companion, successful 99th-floor successor, and ultimately the brother who proves that a teacher can be surpassed without being discarded.
• Marcus Calenberry: An earlier disciple and holder of a corresponding Sword Constellation spirit; Bae Hu-ryeong treats Marcus and Gong-ja as distinct paths toward the same unfinished quest.
• Grey Spider: The rival and intimate witness whom he invited to follow, left waiting, apologized to through Gong-ja, and intends to visit after gaining the freedom to leave the Tower.
• So Baek-hyang: Gong-ja's other martial master; Bae Hu-ryeong resents sharing a pupil but ultimately helps Gong-ja develop beyond either lineage.
• Shiny: A sentient companion who remembers Bae Hu-ryeong's old opponents and travels beside his living spirit through much of Gong-ja's ascent.
• Kim Yul: A former opponent whose identity as Lefanta Aegim's forgotten origin forces Bae Hu-ryeong's pupil to answer an old martial rivalry through recognition rather than simple victory.
• Ja Soo-jung: The Tower Master whose temporary incarnation can perceive his living spirit, and who later grants him the authority to descend from the summit and travel between worlds.

Items

• Bae Hu-ryeong wields swords throughout both lives, including a colossal blade on the 99th floor, but the supplied generated-item manifest assigns him no separately generated item page.